Quoted By:
>Christians, Chrestians and Tacitus
>Another popular citation to mention Jesus is by the Roman historian Tacitus. The copies of his 116 CE Annals that have come down to us read:
>“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians by the populace. Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus. And a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.” (emphasis added)
>Like the Testimonium Flavian, the information provided is extremely sparse, but unlike it, the tone is negative. The first noticeably strange attribute from the quote is that “Chrestians” are said to have derived their name from “Christ”. As it turns out, the word “Chrestians” in the Tacitus manuscript was at one point “corrected” to say “Christians” and it was only due to a suspicious space left behind and ultra-violet examination that the 11th century original was shown to have been subsequently altered. But why would Tacitus use two different spellings? One possible explanation for why there are two different spellings is that one of them is an interpolation
